Christian women, especially, were happy to discuss their faith and relationship with the Lord with me. I go to a regular store and purchase clothing that I like. Others never wore it. I have always liked being with people and enjoyed meeting new people. Most of them just accepted me as I am and I wanted to do the same with them. The prayer covering does NOT save any of us and I would never presume that it does.
When you meet Charlene, you can tell that she is very comfortable in her own skin, with her own choices, and with faith and family that show not only her beliefs but her very identity:. You may remember Eileen. Eileen Kinch is on the right. Her mother, Marie Riegle Kinch, is on the left gray head covering. Photo credit: Linda K. Some years ago, while studying in Germany in a very international setting I met an Egyptian woman who wore a head covering.
We talked about our beliefs and her reasons for wearing a head covering were very similar to yours, Eileen. I had so much respect for her because of her convictions and because she had the courage to publicly wear them, knowing she could be subject to ridicule.
I agree, Elfrieda. Having worn a prayer covering myself for six formative years, I have a real affinity for women who wear any form of veiling. I know that there is no one-size-fits-all answer for why they do it.
And I know that daring to be different builds character. Thanks for your willingness to reach out and connect to someone different. Elfrieda, I had Muslim friends and teachers in college. Their reasons for wearing head coverings have definitely influenced my own. Another thing I appreciate about each of the women, regardless of their personal perspective, is that they are non-judgmental of women whose opinion differs from their own. Exactly, Laurie. Even when yoked to communities, people are people.
And women are individuals. I am also struck with all the various reasons why women wear a covering. Obviously some of the reasons resonate with each of us more than others, depending on where our own faith journey has led us.
Perhaps she is acknowledging that not everyone wears a covering for that purpose, because that is an important point. But I would also say that some women do manage to witness to others when they are wearing a covering, even though they might not have a personal conviction to wear it.
I have a Conservative Mennonite cousin who says that she would not personally choose to wear a covering, except that her community requires it. It was the covering that opened the conversation. Later, we find ways to claim goodness from the path anyway. Thanks for the comment.
Hope others reading this click on your name to discover your own blog and the book Bonnet Strings, which sheds more light on this fascinating subject. Shirley, seeing the photo of you and Charlene in high school and reading the commentary from women who have worn head coverings reminds me that we had two female students from Kalona, Iowa in our senior year of high school class who wore head coverings.
Both wore conservative dresses. At our 40th anniversary reunion in one was still wearing a head covering and one was not. In , I was surprised to learn from another female student from Kalona — that I regarded as one of the most liberal members of our class — we also had students in our graduating class from Wellman and West Chester was a first cousin of them and that it was one of them who had persuaded her to attend our reunion for the first time in 50 years.
We can never judge just from appearances, can we, Barbara? Glad you could reconnect with covered and uncovered members of the class. Thanks for the story. I think it might be a good place to put on my book tour.
Thanks for the reminder. First of all, both have strong convictions they are able to articulate well. Also, they illustrate with specific detail how faith and everyday life can intersect—sometimes in ordinary conversation in day-to-day living, other times through poetry. You are amassing important documentation about the prayer veiling, then and now.
I always learn something on your blog posts, Shirley. Thank you! Thanks, Marian. You observe accurately and compassionately. I love your keen eye and open heart. These are some of the most important traits of the creative person. Glad you learn from me, because I certainly learn from you and your curious mind. Your blog posts are both humorous and well researched. However when a public prayer is given or if I enter a church worship service, I find the strong urge to remove my covering.
Devote Jewish men of course put on their prayer caps. So it is interesting to explore this gender-based practice. Of course men are welcome to comment, Roman. How interesting. Men are taught to remove their hats indoors by custom in society in general. During ceremonial services, even academic ones, men are told to remove their hats during a prayer. My guess is that this practice is probably traceable to I Corinthians 11 if you go back far enough in the history of the university.
And on the other hand, my significant other keeps his hat on during worship. Quaker tradition has men remove their hats when they stand to give ministry but keep their hats on when others are ministering.
Similarly, women would remove their bonnet but keep the cap when ministering. It has been a bit culture-shock-ish for my Catholic family that he keeps his hat on when we go with them to Catholic Mass or a wedding. This is the very core of memoir. Thank you for opening yourself to it and reclaiming a part of yourself with new meaning, Dolores. And even more thanks for sharing your appreciation and insight here. Thank you Roman for your comment! That is actually the main reason I still continue to wear my head veiling today.
Charlene, thanks so much for being willing to share your story and for this comment. I hope you felt well represented by this selection of quotes from your responses to my questions. The nightmare was not over, though.
For the next decade, life carried on much as before, but with one big difference: Mum would not eat or sleep with Dad and would barely speak to him. I was often used as an intermediary, with each trying to persuade me the other was wrong.
My best friend comforted me when I was desperate with worry that my mother would die during her "fasts", when she didn't eat for days in the hope that the Lord would answer her prayers and bring Dad back to the path of righteousness.
My "worldly, unclean" schoolfriends were very sympathetic and tried to bridge the gaps in my experience by carefully recounting theirs. Sometimes I secretly watched TV or listened to records with them on the way home from school.
Once they daringly arranged for me to see a film - To Kill A Mockingbird - at the local cinema during school hours. Meanwhile Jim Taylor Jr's edicts became increasingly bizarre - Sisters had to wear their hair hanging down their backs, covered in a headscarf; all adult Brethren must be married - and then he started to go to bed with married Sisters, supposedly showing how pure he was.
Eventually, in , at a Meeting in Aberdeen, he appeared drunk and stated that his word was of such consequence that the Bible was no longer necessary - a bombshell that caused a number of clearer-sighted Brethren to protest and break away. By this time, it was too late for me to care. I was in my late teens and, to the horror of my family, left for university shortly afterwards.
There I ate chips and curry for the first time, openly read newspapers and novels, drank wine, wore "normal" clothes, listened to pop music and cut my hair. Being unclean was delicious. My mother may have disapproved but she, too, left the Taylorites then, joining instead the same sect as my father and grandmother. She is still alive, still strictly religious, but she does not shut me out of her life. I didn't dare ask. That would get me in big trouble. At school, we weren't supposed to talk to the non-Brethren children, but I wouldn't have known how to.
When they talked about TV and football, I didn't know what they were talking about. The teachers took me out of the classroom during assembly or certain science lessons the Brethren had banned.
They put us in the corridor and gave us worksheets. They didn't ask us what we were being taught at home; they probably thought they were respecting religious differences.
There were rules for every part of our lives. Why didn't I run away? Like most Brethren children, I loved my parents and I was scared of life outside. I used to hear the sound of Satan's hooves on the cobbles of our street or in the bushes of our garden, waiting to snatch us. Grown-ups were terrified of being thrown out, too. If someone was discovered with a radio, didn't give enough money to the collection or asked questions about the rules, they would be kicked out and they wouldn't see their family again.
There were forced confessions, breakdowns and suicides. I knew I wasn't going to be saved in the Rapture because of the questions that constantly spun around my head: if radios were wicked, then why did my father keep one hidden in the back of his car and listen to the cricket on it? Did the Lord know about that? Was I supposed to denounce my father for the radio? I worried about what I would do when the grown-ups disappeared in the Rapture.
How would we get to high ground before the tidal waves came? How would we stay away from Satan's people? I began to steal and hide tins of corned beef and baked beans under my bed so I'd be ready for when the grown-ups would be taken up into the sky, leaving us to face the terrors of Armageddon.
When I was eight, my family left the Brethren. The elderly Brethren leader, called the 'Man of God', was found in bed with one of the married sisters, so 8, Brethren around the world, including my immediate family, left and formed a splinter group. Eventually, my parents left altogether and tried other churches. My father, at first anguished, soon discovered the joy of theatre, literature and music; he brought home a TV and took us to the cinema to see [a re-release of] Gone with the Wind.
I remember stepping across the threshold of the cinema holding my mother's hand, certain the sky was going to fall. People say it must have been amazing to suddenly have freedom. For me, it was confusing. The grown-ups never explained why we left. No one told us they'd been wrong, that they'd made mistakes and that the Rapture probably wasn't coming. They were too confused to explain, so we had to figure it out for ourselves.
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